Introduction to Season One of Westworld, a new dramatic series set in a futuristic theme park populated by human-like robots, where the wealthy can live out their fantasies of adventure, sex, and violence.

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Remember when we first hear of the Battlestar Galactica remake? We said -"really? That Star-Wars wannabe cheesy sci-fi show?" And then we got an amazing ride with every kind of emotion and situation that was deep, and interesting. So here we are with Westworld, a remake of a Michael Crichton movie. And we got a wild ride where we literally discuss the ability of mankind to "play God" and create a race of self-aware robots for the explicit purpose of being playthings for rich people. FIrst of all this is just great storytelling, with numerous interwoven plots that jump not just between characters but (you'll figure it out). There is a lot of great acting and the production values are in line with feature films. I recommend this series as one of the best things I've seen ever on television. Well done.

I saw the original West World with Yul Brenner some years back. I did enjoy that movie and thought it was ahead of its time. This new West World is absolutely a mind blowing experience. In the original Yul Brenner was the primary "bad host; wherein this series everyone is primary at one point or another. Expanding the story to include so many characters and personalities, plus the talents of J.J. Abrams, Jonathan Nolan, Joy and a host of other excellent writers and producers from other quality shows such as Lost, Person of Interest, Grimm and a few more, means more of top notch programming that I like. I am watching it a second time because I believe shows such as this are a second see because of the many nuances and sublties that are not readily apparent in the first watch. I am constantly searching for quality programming, which is hard to find, even on cable channels. There are award winning actors in this series. I hope they get the recognition they deserve.

When I first started watching Westworld, I was skeptical, as the initial story line describes a recreational fantasy park that creates and utilizes AI "humans" to fulfill the "fantasies of successful men who pay plenty of $$ to "play" in Westworld. The usual storyline is about how men's fantasies seem to always revolve around violence (killing and raping). But Westworld delivers much more than it initially leads on. The complexity of the real human characters become rivaled by the AI humans "working" in the park and their own experiences as unwitting participants in this recreational fantasy land. The question eventually emerges as to whether "consciousness" can evolve in AI humans, what really constitutes being "human" and what are the ethical aspects of using AI humans as "slaves" in human wish fulfillment.Central to the story is how one of the "rogue" developers of the AI humans (robots/machines, etc.) wanted to ascertain how "consciousness" could be developed by AI humans - or in essence - how did consciousness develop within real humans and can that knowledge be utilized with AI humans? Since the main purpose of the AI humans is to fulfill the "fantasies" of the recreational park users, this would throw a monkey wrench into this business plan, as each AI human is programmed to "please" the paying customers, and their experiences and suffering is erased, so that they retain no "memory," and they are back at the park doing their "job." Does retaining information (memory) become the precursor to the development of consciousness? The concept is that memories provide a sense of continuum - a historical sense of existing, of time passing, of being part of the world, of how we connect to others and most importantly, how we change, react and evolve based on continuous knowledge, information, experience and interaction with our environment. We see this in modern development of AI. In Westworld, since the AI humans have much greater capacity than real humans for intelligence and physical strength and power, if they were to achieve control over their own "destiny" by deciding to expand their innate intelligence and capabilities and retaining their memories - would they be the next evolution of what it means to be "human."

Westworld raises interesting questions about consciousness, free will, and the necessary and sufficient mental structures to be "like a human." There is a lot of discussion about the first two items in academic literature and by computer scientists, but very little about the last element, which I think is equally important. Scientists will probably ultimately find some kinds of answers to these questions, but dramatizations raise them in a different, perhaps more graspable way.

Another interesting aspect of Westworld it the questions it raises regarding real human - artificial human relations. Would humans really enjoy torturing and killing artificial humans if they could be remade the next day? What if they were unable to take aggressive actions to protect themselves? Wouldn't that be like dismembering live rabbits?

And would society/governance allow this kind of thing to be a profitable business? What would that do to us?

I was unsure at first, I was afraid the violence and nudity was taking away from the story. I realized along the way that it served a few purposes. The acting is above board, writing is good, over all story was retold well. The story itself is my no means a new idea but a well written modern take on a very old one. Will watch season two and for those considering watching it keep in mind it is rated MA for good reasons.